"Imagine that you're playing a soccer game on your own," he said. "You score a fantastic goal and X-Box automatically saves it onto the hard disk. Some time later, you and a friend are set up for the big match. The commentator announces the teams, building the atmosphere, and then says something like, "Look at this great goal United scored last week. Will they be able to do it today?" at which point the replay is pulled from the hard disk and shown."

Microsoft are insistent that X-Box will provide a far more immersive experience than we've ever had before. The hard disk will also allow for a huge amount of commentary in sports titles, a feature that "quite frankly sucks" in current games, according to Allard. We would have to agree that commentary is usually far too repetitive and is switched off after a few games.

But what about the online capabilities of X-Box? Allard led the charge to get Microsoft online with his 1993 memo to top executives, Windows: The Killer Application for the Internet. He has also overseen Microsoft's Gaming Zone, the most successful games site on the Internet, yet there's no modem in the X-Box (although one will be available separately). Instead, the system will launch with a built-in 100Mb per second Ethernet port, enabling connection to existing networks.

Connecting X-Box to a PC sounds like an interesting proposition; indeed, Allard suggested that you could maybe design levels for a game on your PC and then send the finished files to X-Box. So no keyboard for the console then? Absolutely not - Microsoft want X-Box to be a dedicated games machine, not just a PC that you plug into the telly.